Operating a workforce solutions group across seven European countries is not simply a matter of having offices in different cities. Each market carries its own legal framework, its own collective agreement structures, its own cultural expectations around how workforce partnerships work, and its own definition of what a compliant, professional staffing engagement looks like. Treat them as interchangeable and you will fail in all of them.
In Sweden, no placement begins without full collective agreement compliance under the relevant framework — IF Metall for blue-collar industrial, Byggnads for construction, and the Swedish Transport Workers Union for maritime roles. These are not optional. They are the baseline for operating with any credibility in the Swedish industrial market.
In Norway, every engagement is structured around PSA regulations and, for O&G and offshore clients, Achilles JQS pre-qualification requirements. The Norwegian labour market is among the most regulated in Europe — and among the most demanding when it comes to safety culture and HSE documentation. Our Norwegian operations are built around those standards, not in spite of them.
In Germany, our AÜG license and works council protocols are non-negotiable. Germany’s equal pay mandate, its 18-month maximum assignment rule, and the co-determination rights of works councils in temporary staffing decisions mean that every engagement requires careful legal structuring before the first contractor sets foot on site. We handle that structuring. The client simply receives the workforce.
In the UK, IR35 off-payroll working rules since April 2021 demand sophisticated contractor status assessment on every engagement. For offshore and energy clients, FPAL and Achilles qualification frameworks add another layer of supplier verification requirements. Our UK operations navigate both without placing the administrative burden on the client.
Serbia and Portugal complete the footprint as strategic labour source markets — providing cost-efficient, skilled talent pools that are recruited, trained, and compliance-checked before deployment into higher-value project environments across the rest of the network.
What ties all of this together is not a single rulebook — no single rulebook could cover seven jurisdictions simultaneously. It is a single standard: the client assumes zero compliance risk, every worker deployed is the right person for that specific project in that specific regulatory environment, and QW Group carries the institutional knowledge required to make that guarantee hold. Seven countries. One standard. No exceptions.